China's etiquette classes are teaching socialites Western ways

For Tang, who often spends time mingling with the upper echelons of society in Europe and the United States, it is a necessary step in the evolution of China's newly-minted middle classes where she says good manners have failed to keep pace with the bank accounts of the country's nouveau riche.

"It is a reflection of your level of education. If you chew loudly people will say, 'This is a low-class person, he has nothing but money.' As China becomes richer people are starting to recognise that," says Tang, a piano professor at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, who judges at international competitions in Italy and Spain.

"Everyone appreciates beauty but a beautiful face is just part of that. You can have a beautiful rose but you need a good vase to go with the flower. I bring my daughter to lessons. She is 15. But they are good for men too, not  just just the ladies."

Tang is just one of thousands of well-heeled women in China taking  etiquette classes designed to help them navigate high-society in New York, London and Paris. There are hundreds of Swiss-style finishing schools taking in debutantes across China, many of them locally run with various levels of legitimacy, as well as government-sponsored colleges taking a less Western-influenced approach.

Social changes

The trend is a reflection of the dramatic social changes sweeping China. While the country's booming economy has created a new generation of wealthy elite, many have had little exposure to Western culture or international travel.

While formal manners are nothing new in China, particularly among the upper-classes in cities like Shanghai during the 1920s, the country was in effect closed off for six decades during Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution. During this troubled period, etiquette was seen as bourgeois and discouraged.

De Bernadac,  one of China's sought-after etiquette coaches, says while his clients want to adapt to these changes it does not necessarily mean they want to shed their Chinese roots and traditions.

"They don't want to become Western, they are proud to be Chinese. In this elite part of society, that is very important. But they also want to be welcomed and respected in the international community," de Bernadac , known as Gill to his regular clients, says during a break in the afternoon's lessons.

"If you go to America or Australia and you have a business dinner at a high-end place, you want to know how to order."

While there are other foreign teachers in China, de Bernadac is unusual as he is the only one who has broken into the market on his own without a local partner. (Australia's etiquette queen, June Dally-Watkins, has a joint venture in China with a local businessman.)

The native Parisian practices what he preaches. He is the epitome of politeness and style, dressed in a double-breasted suit, with a red cravat and matching pocket square.

Good manners

Etiquette training goes back four generations in de Bernadac's family. His grandmother and her father were private tutors at the court of the King of Morocco for decades from the 1920s, a time when the African country was opening up to the West in the same way China has this century. He and his brother were schooled in good manners by their grandmother as children. He says they were not allowed to have dessert if they did not sit up straight at the dinner table. This was determined by whether a piece of paper tucked under each armpit remained in place throughout the meal.

After studying business and making an initial foray to China in 2011, he returned in 2014 to found the Academie de Bernadac in Shanghai, which also works with luxury brands and trains hospitality staff. About 95 per cent of his students are women, but there are a growing number who are sending their husbands and sons to classes.

He says many of his clients are successful businesswomen, not just bored housewives with wealthy husbands.

"We don't have many housewives who don't work. Most of them,  like these ladies, are businesswomen who are successful in their own way. They have a strong will to become a better person."

De Bernadac's two other students that afternoon definitely fit the high-achieving category. Chu Mingjingjing, a Shanghai luxury brand ambassador dressed stylishly in a 1920s Chinese qipao, and jewellery designer Angela Chen, both grew up in Shanghai and hardly seem in need of etiquette lessons.

Chen, who was educated in Canada, says she ended up in one of de Bernadac's classes accidentally after originally sending her 14-year-old son to study European-style etiquette.

"My son was so busy at that time, so I came to the class instead," says Chen, who launched her jewellery label Angela Jewels six years ago.

"I learnt a lot. I am from a Shanghainese family and I learnt table manners from my grandmother when I was a child. But while I went to university in British Columbia and Shanghai is a Western-style city, there were huge cultural differences when I went abroad.

"The fashion culture was different. We drink baijiu [Chinese liquor], you drink beer and red wine. I thought we should learn something. My son wanted to study in Britain or the US so sooner or later he would have to learn Western-style manners."

Money talks

Chu, who started a luxury branding company called Luxe China, regularly mixes with royalty in Europe including Italy's Princess Catherine Colonna de Stigliano. Her family owned a publishing house before Mao Zedong's Communist Party ruled China in 1949 and grew up on the Bund. While the style and class of Shanghai in the 1930s disappeared during the Cultural Revolution, she says that it is making a comeback.

"I remember in Hong Kong and Taiwan, I saw the most elegant older ladies in their 80s and 90s. They have this nobility, they were naturally elegant, very classy, very well-dressed. They have experienced the best part of China in the 1930s, and this is something to preserve."

The surge in the number of middle class Chinese travelling overseas or sending their children to foreign universities has also triggered an interest in Western culture. But the main driver is money. There were 1893 individuals in China with a fortune of 2 billion yuan ($420 million) or more last year, according to the annual Huran Rich List. This included 620 billionaires measured in US dollars, a six-fold increase from a decade ago.

But while money may not be able to buy taste, it can apparently buy manners in China. A two-day group class ranges from 4000 yuan a day to 7900 yuan a person. One-on-one classes start at 12,000 yuan a day. Business groups range from 12,000 yuan for an afternoon to 30,000 yuan for a day.

The posture lesson has now moved on and De Bernadac is showing the ladies how to sit to make their legs look longer or slimmer. The secret is apparently crossing your legs on the cuff. Where to place your hands?

"Place your hand on your wrist so you don't have big hands," he says.

'Spirit and values'

Tackling high tea also turns out to be a minefield. Fingers are allowed if whatever you are picking up doesn't make your hands sticky. Dipping scones into your tea is strictly forbidden. Start from salty to sweet, and work your way from the bottom of the carousel to top. Napkins must be folded into a triangle with lipstick marks hidden inside.

His 45-minute afternoon tea class is ironically one of the most popular, even though drinking tea was traditionally a Chinese pastime. Private classes range from deportment, dining etiquette and public speaking.

All three ladies roll their eyes when I ask what they think of the Crazy Rich Asians movie and how this has affected the West's image of China's middle classes. They do not appear to think much of the movie, which lampoons the flamboyant wealth of a Singaporean Chinese family, but they know one of the actors.

"The People's Republic of China is still a new country. We have more than 5000 years of history but the country, this government is still new," Chen says, while stirring her tea "from 6 to 12 o'clock" as instructed earlier in the class.

"People are getting rich in a very short space of time in the last 20 years. Now people have money, but what about spirit and values? That's what people are looking for."